Energistics announced today that Ray Smelley, General Manager, Technical Computing and Chief Information Officer, Energy Technology Company, Chevron, has been elected to its Board of Directors.

 

Mr. Smelley leads Chevron’s information technology (IT) investment in exploration, reservoir management, drilling and completions and operations. As such, he is accountable for exploration and reservoir management data, information management systems and the company’s high performance computing infrastructure. He also leads the IT research and development practice for Chevron and is responsible for the evaluation, assessment and development of solutions in emerging IT.

 

Mr. Smelley’s experience in IT spans 23 years at Chevron and includes infrastructure, workflow automation, information management and IT for major capital projects. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Louisiana State University and has served with the corporation in Louisiana, Texas, California and Australia.

 

On his election as a board member of Energistics, Ray Smelley said, "I am honored by this opportunity. As our industry continues to face economic pressures, resources like Energistics’ open data exchange standards and the forum are an important component that we need to consider. This will help improve the use of data to increase operational efficiency and decrease project cost and risk, which are critical to our industry at this time.”

Ben Williams, VP & CIO of Devon Energy and Energistics Board Chair, said, “The Board is delighted to have Ray as a member. He is well respected in the industry and brings with him many years of IT knowledge in addition to oil and gas experience. He will be a key contributor to the Board’s vision on standards development and adoption.”

 

Ross Philo, President and CEO of Energistics, added, “We welcome Ray to the Board of Directors and we look forward to his contributions toward further development of oil and gas data exchange standards and helping to advance their global adoption by the industry.” In addition to Mr. Smelley, the members of Energistics’ board are Ben Williams, VP & CIO of Devon Energy, who serves as Chair, Matthias Hartung, Vice President Technical Data – Shell, who serves as Vice Chair, Dean Forrester, Managing Director in Accenture’s Global Oil & Gas Group, Eric Toogood, DISKOS Manager for NPD, Peter Eilsø Nielsen, Chief Geologist - Statoil,  Chandra Yeleshwarapu, Director, Information Management & Platform Technologies – Halliburton-Landmark, Vasu Guruswamy, VP SIS Services – Schlumberger, Kevin Ball, Manager, Upstream Technical COE – ExxonMobil, Elinor Doubell, Information & Data Management Lead – BP, Rajesh Krishnamurthy, Executive Vice President – Infosys, Evelyne Tourte, Vice President, Information Systems – Total, and Ross Philo, President & CEO for Energistics; who all serve as directors.